Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Once Alex began cultivating and absorbing Sunheart, he was lost in it. If not for outside interruption, he would be cultivating for days, weeks, and months.

The first interruption that came was a good one. Whisker had finally come back to life after a few days, so Alex took some time to talk with him, let him know what he had missed.

At the same time, Whisker gave Alex everything he had with him.

Alex had forgotten about the hundreds of Sunhearts and beast cores of the highest quality that Whisker had collected from the beasts Death killed back next to the very core of Hell.

Thankfully, Whisker had kept them far enough in his soul space that none of them had ended up infecting each other.

Alex took away the Sunhearts first, throwing them into his own Soul Space where Pearl would keep hold of it.

As for the beast core, Alex let Whisker keep it.

Whisker also had plenty of elixir he had managed to gather before Alex had found Bladedance in the desert. Those were meant for him to train on next, but Alex had never gotten the chance.

So, now Alex left it for Whisker to make use of.

Once Whisker began consuming said elixir and cultivated to absorb it, Alex fell back into his cultivation lull again.

The next interruption came around two weeks later when the old man came to find Alex.

“You were supposed to come find me once you were done cultivating,” the old man said with a confused look. “You haven’t come out once.”

“I haven’t had the time,” Alex said. “I was still cultivating.”

“Still?” the old man was surprised. “But it’s been close to a month.”

Alex shrugged. “That’s normal for a cultivator, you know?” he said, and then realized that he might actually not know. With how little time everyone got to cultivate, most these people cultivated for was to fill their Dantian, not to improve their cultivation base.

“Okay…” the old man said and brought out a large metal formation. “I’ve got what you asked for. Try and see if it will work or not.”

Alex placed the metal formation in the middle of the room and stood before it. Whisker looked from the side with curiosity.

“Whisker, do you have some Decaying Sunhearts?” he asked.

Whisker nodded and brought out some.

Alex thought for a bit and placed just one of them on the metal dais. The moment the Yang energy slipped out of the Sunheart and into the metal plate, it activated.

Alex felt a dull sensation of ache in his mind that did seem to grow slowly. A minute later, the pain tapered off at a still low level for Alex. It was no different than what he would feel if he kept all 8 of his Origins split.

Splitting origins gave both pain and a burden, but this was just pain so it was easy to handle. Alex did quite like that. While using the formation for burdening his mind would’ve resulted in making his Intent stronger, not doing so allowed more room for the formation to make the pain threshold higher.

Alex could use it to hurt himself mentally in ways he had never before.

He was quite scared to see how high it would go, but he was also excited for how much it would better him.

Alex dropped one more Decaying Sunheart onto the platform and the pain increased, this time more uncomfortable. He would have to continue adding more and more Sunhearts to make the effect of the formation stronger and stronger.

“Thank you,” he said. “This will do perfectly.”

“It’s fine. It was easy to make anyway,” the old man said. “But can I ask why you wanted me to make one that only gave you pain? We have formations that our disciples use to improve their Intent on things. Wouldn’t something like that be useful?”

“It could,” Alex said with a nod. “But the seal on me fights back not with its own Intent, but simply by triggering intense pain directly into my mind. It’s meant to dissuade me from touching the seal. I need to fight back that pain specifically.”

“Couldn’t you just improve your Intent?” the old man asked. “You can force your Intent to lessen the pain.”

“I can, but that means splitting my Intent to deal with one thing, making the rest weaker to deal with the other. I need everything I have to focus on getting rid of the seal, and that means taking on the full brunt of the pain it fights back with without fighting back against it.”

The old man considered Alex’s words for a while and nodded. “I see.” There was nothing more to say in this matter. “Oh, right. Langwan wanted to give you a message. They found the real culprits behind the Hell Warrior sect’s massacre. It was a rival sect from the same city. After forcing a few of their top elders to speak the truth, they revealed everything.”

“Oh! So they got punished?” Alex asked.

“They will be. We’re still dealing with the logistics of just how many were involved in that massacre. Once we have a better picture, we’ll punish them.”

Alex was happy to learn that.

Once the old man left, Alex fell back into cultivation once again. He ate Sunhearts in between, checked on his Soul Space and Spiritual Sea, and constantly trained atop the pain-inducing metal formation.

There was no break to cultivation, but even at this rate, it would take him some years to break through to the Immortal Origin 6th realm. As for upgrading his body constitution, he wasn’t sure how many Sunhearts he needed there.

So he would just have to continue as he had.

Alex cultivated for another few weeks without stop, and then came the third and final interruption.

Bladedance arrived, a little angry and annoyed.

“How long are you going to keep cultivating?” she asked. “Come out. You need to learn the Time dao as fast as you can.”